Good afternoon guys!
After my Zeta Gundam review, I went onto its successor. Piloted by Judau Ashta, claimed to be the strongest newtype in the UC era.
You can check out the Zeta Gundam review here:
Directly continues where Zeta Gundam left off, Judau takes the spotlight after Kamille succumbs to a a delusional state, an effect from Scirrocos newtype abilites.
Judau initially started with the Zeta Gundam at the beginning of the show and tends to get in all sorts of troubles with it. There was one episode where he used a Zaku head as a replacement for the damaged one and he was mistaken as an enemy lol.
Since Kamille's Zeta was a huge success, Anaheim Electronics continued developing it further and I came up with this beast, The ZZ Gundam.
Box art:
A very big box, close to an MG box. Lot's of pictures and info can be seen around the box to entice the buyer.
You will also see a small pic of the kit saying it looks good OOTB.
Manual:
Everything about this kit is massive. The manual even has an MG feel to it because it's not the usual folded pamphlet style.
Color guide is shown at the last page and the runners are mostly duplicates since the ZZ is very symmetrical in design.
Middle page shows a close up of the kit and its gimmicks. Also shows the ZZ in action along with the other MS in the Zeta series.
Complete Assembly:
Like the Zeta and many of recent posts, this is a kit prior this blog thus I couldn't show the usual building segment.
For this kit, I decided to just clean my nub marks (damn you old self.) and line him properly because the clean look really defines how amazing this beast is. He's quite bulky and menacing making him like a tank of some sort that really packs quite a punch during battles.
With an MS this big, it'll be obvious that it will need a lot of energy to run properly and by the looks of it, he won't be as fast as a typical MS.
Details:
Very minimal lining is needed and minimal painting as well. Most of the painting I did is the red for the thrusters and knees.
The black parts in the vents are stickers, I used them because they blend well with the kit and they don't destroy the kits overall appearance.
The eye stickers are quite unique because it's cut in half, I duuno why. Aside from that, most of that parts are molded separately in color which is a huge plus.
Lot's and lots of red.
Articulation:
I literally tried to maximize the articulation ranges of the kit with the backpack. The ZZ Gundam has a lot of big pieces and from there you can guess that doing dynamic poses is limited to none at all.
Most of the moving pieces in the arms and legs are mainly for the transformation and can get in the way in posing as well especially those arm flaps.
Shoulders are most likely fixed unless you rotate the big fins on top of it but that will make things look unnatural in some poses. Elbows and knees do bend fairly well but the range their arms and legs can achieve makes it somewhat useless.
The feet is limited as well due to to all that armor pieces sticking out forcing you to really invest on an action base because he definitely belongs in the air.
Most of the parts are pegs and ball joints to easily detach them when transforming him. Yup, he's a parts former but that doesn't mean it's bad.
The beam Sabre ports can also move in certain ways.
The legs can only open this much.. well, It's not like the ZZ needs to do full splits anyway.
Accessories:
The ZZ Gundams signature weapon, the double beam rifle. From the looks of it, it fires strong beams that almost levels with a ship. You only get one trigger finger hand to hold this and it's only for the right hand.
The barrels, scope and handle are movable mainly for the transformation. Minimal painting is done for the pipes the yellow trim at the cockpit side.
This gun also serves as the cockpit for the Core top when his in mobile armor mode.
The hyper beam Sabre. This has the same size as MG kits, they give you two beam effects but it's kinda pointless because they only give you one holding hand so dual wielding is not possible.
The arm wings can serve as shields as well to protect the ZZ from attacks it can't dodge from fast enough.
They also serves as cannons in G-Fortress mode.
You also get a built in Cannon in its head. The high mega cannon fires a very powerful beam and it's so powerful it can't be used more than once at a time. It's usually a one time thing during a battle and repetitive use with minimal cool down can damage the MS.
The backpack also fires missiles and serves as the base for the Core Base unit when his in G-Fortress mode.
Core Fighter:
You also get a Core fighter with this kit, which is cool! You can't mount him on an action base though unless he's connected to the Core base.
The boosters are just held by mostly friction and you can adjust them using the pegs to have the compact mode when it's connected to the Core base.
Posing:
Seriously, that's pretty much it with the beam Sabre. It's too bad he only comes with one holding hand.
They pose him like this on the side of the box, you treat it like a bazooka.
You can extend the arm but because of the weapons weight it tends to droop. I did the super glue tightening trick to help stiffen the pegs and it actually helped him maintaining this pose.
So yeah, aside from his standing pose (which is still cool visually) it's mostly him moving forward readying his attacks.
With those armor pieces and wing flaps, rotating the arms can be a nuisance at times when you want to do certain poses if you want to look dynamic. Fold the arm flaps just to have some more space.
The ZZ Gundam is mostly in space so ground poses will be weird with this guy.
Be creative. The only other ground pose I can think off hahaha! It's the "Wanna fight me?" pose.
Transformation:
The ZZ Gundam integrated the core fighter system from the original RX-78-2 Gundam. He can split into 2 small man operated pieces for easy transportation and a quick get away.
Core top:
Another parts former. As I said, that's not necessarily a bad thing because it keeps everything secured and sturdy.
You'll get a another connection piece to replace the head and the shoulder pegs.
They give you this nice block to hold the parts for the Mobile armor mode. It's a nice feature to avoid missing small pieces.
For the gun, just flip in the scope and handle and rotate the barrels the opposite way and connect the chest piece.
You basically connect everything back to the body but it imitates the chest flipping up.
For the arms, remove the hand and replace it with the smaller thruster. Just rotate the shoulder piece, forearms and wings to get the said effect.
You connect them to the body and you're done. Reminds me of a Voltes V :D
Core base:
You basically just remove the pieces inside the inner armor so you can flatten it then reattach the boosters on the opposite side and attach the thruster on where the thighs should connect.
This will make it look like the piece rotated, nice illusion.
And you connect it on the opposite side to get this effect.
Lastly, flip out the sideskirts when in Core base mode and just attach the core fighter.
For the backpack, just replace the default one with a longer one so it would look like it transitioned from the back of the Gundam into its legs.
Both can be mounted on an action base, despite the Core base's size, and action base 2 is enough to hold it.
I broke the peg in my action base 2 though while removing it from the Core top, goes to show how secured the connection is.
G-fortress:
Just connect the Core top to the Core base via the waist joint like in Gundam form. Angle the beam sabres a bit and point the sideskirts down and you're good to go!
I used an action base 1 this time because this form is bigger.
Thanks to an SHF stand I can somewhat pose the core fighter with it.
Once the transformation is complete, you have these parts to deal with. I literally just did the transformation twice in my life. First was when I first got the kit and second was for this review :D It's also space consuming so I keep him in Gundam mode.
Comparisons:
Right next to his predecessor, The Zeta Gundam. They're not far from each other in terms of color schemes and concepts.
The ZZ literally doubles the Zeta Gundam in terms of appearance and firepower. The Zeta is like a jet while the ZZ is a B52-bomber. It's that big of a difference.
He suddenly looked smaller standing beside the other huge MS in the UC timeline. The Sazabi really towers them all.
For the HGUC 1/144 Nu Gundam with HWS review click here:
For the HGUC 1/144 Sazabi review click here:
The HGUC 1/144 Unicorn Gundam Destroy mode doesn't have a review yet but stay tuned!
The mandatory RX-78-2 family photo haha! He easily tower over the grand daddy gundam and almost close to the height of a typical MG 1/100 kit.
For the MG 1/100 RX-78-2 Gundam review click here:
For the HGUC 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam review click here:
For the SD RX-78-2 Gundam review click here:
Conclusion:
Details 10/10:
This guy looks amazing visually, it's really close to its artwork and show counterparts. It doesn't have a lot of lining and majority of the pieces are molded separately in color which means doing an OOTB build with minimal effort can easily give you a nice looking model kit.
Most paint detailing will be done for the thrusters because they have red inner parts which is fairly easy to do. It's not necessary but the look really helps adding more realism to it.
My favorite part would probably be the head for its forehead cannon, it has nice molded details and not just one chunk of plastic. The backpack is also well detailed for a blocky part.
The legs also has a lot of nice details and mechanisms and that small piece you put inside the inner leg gives an illusion that it's really opened up. Good thing that's not a peg joint.
Articulation 6/10:
It's pretty obvious. Big kits like this usually fail in this area despite having an amazing visual appearance. Most of the rotations and swivels are mostly for the transformation and not to help the kit do dynamic poses.
Connections are stable though making him close to a statue in terms of sturdiness. Because of the ZZ armor design, things will always hit one way or the other when you move or angle some pieces, most notably the arms and shoulders. They both have large pieces sticking out and positioning them to make way for other parts can be tedious at times.
The back also hinders the shoulders since it mostly covers the entire backside of the Gundam. The waist can rotate to a certain degree but it's kinda useless since the legs can only move to certain point.
The legs can barely spread but its somewhat ok if you wanna do ground poses, but don't expect kneeling poses or dynamic poses to look natural.
Accessories 7/10:
It's fairly acceptable but most of the accessories can only be held in the right hand because the left hand is left with only a closed fist.
The double beam rifle looks cool and all but when I bought it's really heavy for the arm to carry properly. You need to push in the hands to somewhat lock it in place but even though, it's hard to position this thing to do natural looking poses.
Even the box arts shows them resting the butt on his shoulder to be able to lift it. You can try to squeeze it in his armpit if you like or try bending the elbows and have it face upward like he's reloading as an option.
The beam sabres look cool for its size but as I said, I wish we can use both of the sabres. It's kinda weird that the kit has 2 effect beams but you can't have him dual wield.
The rockets in the backpack is a nice addition as well but there's nothing you can do with that, same goes with the forehead cannon.
Just use photoshop to enhance the poses in pictures haha!
The inclusion of the core fighter is cool because they give you the option of posing him in his 2 separate forms rather than sticking with the G-Fortress mode.
Parts 10/10:
There's always a trade off with transforming kits. It's either a complicated transformation with parts falling all the time where articulation somewhat suffers or a solid parts-former that barely hampers articulation.
In this case, the ZZ Gundam is a solid kit both in Gundam and Mobile armor mode. In Gundam mode, all the pieces are connected how they're suppose to. Unlike the RG scale that does a full transformation in some of its kits, you won't experience breaking small pieces or connecting points when transforming it.
A parts former can be acceptable if it ensures the stability of the kit and it's not too much of a hassle to achieve. One infamous kit I can think of is the HGUC 1/144 Delta plus gundam.. It's a good kit but the transformation is just too much of a hassle. You do too much part swapping with small pieces and that can be a headache.
For the ZZ Gundam, the transformation is simple and can be done easily and it gives you a solid form as well. All the pieces hold well because it's technically in gundam form with parts placed in slightly different postions.
For the most part, every piece holds well but weight issues can't be avoided like with the gun but that's to be expected. The backpack doesn't seem to weigh him down in the ground, you just need to position the legs and knees at the right position to hold his position.
There are barely any seam lines here, the transformation gimmick in the leg really gives that fluid illusion thanks to some subtle part swapping.
Verdict 8/10:
Long story short, it looks good visually but don't expect dynamic poseability. Like with all my kits and previous reviews, I got this kit because I love the UC era and I mainly collect the Lead suits.
At the time I purchased this, there was no MG 1/100 ZZ Gundam Ver. ka yet so the only options you have are the first MG 1/100 ZZ Gundam which is infamous for being a huge brick because it's so heavy or the FAZZ Gundam, which is basically the previous one with even more bigger armor.
So, I opted for the HG scale because it's solid and despite being a parts-former it delivers well with its gimmicks. It just falls a little too short in the accessory department.
If you set aside the lack of posing options, you still have one amazing kit in terms of visual appearance and overall stature.
Proportions are nice and being able to do his G-Fortress and core top/base mode in this scale is enough to get my attention because The S and Ex-S gundam can't transform in this scale which made me pass on their kits and just patiently wait for an update for their respective MG kits haha!
I've yet to watch the show but I have a vague idea on what happened.
I hope you enjoyed the review! I'll try to finish my UC kits first before I jump to another time line.
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